Survivors of yesterday¿s earthquake in Iran pelted a minister's convoy with stones today after accusing authorities of responding too slowly to save people buried under the rubble of their homes.
Relief workers struggled to treat at least 1,500 injured people and set up shelter for those made homeless after a quake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale hit the northern Qazvin province yesterday, killing at least 222 people.
Around 60 people threw stones and rushed toward Interior Minister Mr Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari's convoy as he visited one of the worst affected villages in the mountainous region. The windows of an ambulance behind the minister's car were smashed.
Villagers, preparing to spend a second night outside in the cold, were angry they were still waiting for food, medicine and tents. They said they needed pumps for clean water, power generators, and heavy machinery to clear the tonnes of debris.
Nearly half the homes here have been levelled leaving survivors unprotected against the soaring heat of the day and near-freezing mountain temperatures at night.
"My child died and the local people helped me to bring him out of the rubble. Only local people are helping," said one man in Avaj, a town near the quake's epicentre.
Police and soldiers joined the rescue effort which included sniffer dogs but were making slow progress.
"They left people under the rubble, even those who were alive, people who then died," said an elderly man.
Mr Hassan Qadami, head of the Red Crescent rescue operation, said the search for victims began on Saturday afternoon but he had little hope they would find more survivors. "We're almost done with rescue operations," he said.
Qadami said his teams had set up 4,200 tents in the quake-hit region. The Red Crescent said earlier 5,000 houses had been destroyed, leaving 25,000 people homeless.
The Red Crescent revised the death toll down today to 222 people from an earlier estimate of 500, saying some of the injured had mistakenly been counted among the dead.
But residents said they believed the death toll was higher. Qazvin's governor Jalaleddin Sharafi said in a statement his office had already issued more than 500 burial permits.